The US government has a ballooning borrowing problem

The new numbers are in -- and the country's borrowing problem is growing.The federal government is slated to b...

Posted: Feb. 5, 2018 1:47 PM

Updated: Feb. 6, 2018 6:04 AM

The new numbers are in -- and the country's borrowing problem is growing.

Scroll for more content...

The federal government is slated to borrow $955 billion during this fiscal year, according to new Treasury Department numbers released last week.

That's the highest borrowing level since 2012 and a sharp spike from the $519 billion the government borrowed last year, up a whopping 84% since fiscal year 2017.

And the numbers are expected to climb from there: The federal government will need to borrow $1.08 trillion in 2019 and $1.13 trillion 2020, according to estimates from the Treasury Department's primary dealer survey. These numbers are still far below the amount the federal government borrowed during the recession.

In another recent report, the Congressional Budget Office pointed to the affects of the GOP's tax reform bill as a main reason for bumping up its estimate of when the debt ceiling will next need to be raised.

It had previously estimated late March or early April, but "after incorporating the anticipated effects of recent tax legislation and actual spending and revenue amounts in December into its calculations, CBO now projects the range of possible dates as falling earlier in March."

The tax reform plan was slated to add $1 trillion to the debt, even after accounting for expected economic growth.

But recent polling has shown that Americans care less about the deficits than they did in the wake of the recession. Only 54% of Americans think the budget deficit is a "very serious" problem, according to data from the Pew Research Center, down from a broad 75% in 2011 at the peak of the tea party surge.